Phone and internet complaints down but fixes taking longer

Australians are making fewer complaints about their phone and internet services but, when things go wrong, they're taking longer to be rectified, according to new data from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.

The TIO's annual report shows it received 132,387 complaints from consumers and small businesses during last financial year, a 21.1 per cent decrease over the previous year.

More than half of all complaints had a connection, changing provider or service quality issue.Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

However, in 2017-18, when complaints were marked unresolved and so escalated by the TIO, 77 per cent of them were closed within 60 days. In the past year that fell to only 47 per cent of cases, meaning half of the unresolved cases took more than two months to close following TIO action.

"The volume of complaints coming back to us unresolved shows an emerging picture of complexity in technical and small business issues," Ombudsman Judi Jones said in a statement, noting that special teams had been formed to handle those escalated complaints.

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Of all the complaints, 85.3 per cent were from residential consumers and the remainder were from small business. Fixed internet replaced mobile as the most complained-about service, with high equipment fees and service providers being slow to address issues being the most common complaints.

In total there were 11,635 complaints about changing service providers or connecting to the NBN and 23,362 complaints about the quality of service on an NBN connection. In both cases the number of complaints per connected household grew in the second half of the financial year.

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Responding to the TIO report, NBN Co chief customer officer Brad Whitcomb said the company was working to make the installation of new services as seamless as possible for customers.

"With more than half of Australian premises now connected to the network, and the build nine months away from completion, we remain committed to ensuring Australians have a good experience," he said.

"This includes continuing to meet the expectations of our customers by connecting them right the first time and if there is a fault on the network, we want to ensure it’s restored in a timely manner."

During last financial year, half of all complaints made to the TIO concerned Telstra, which operates the lion's share of phone and internet services across the country. Second was Optus at almost one-quarter of all complaints, with other telcos accounting for 5 per cent or less of all complaints.